Oregon, not USC, looks like the team to beat

USC (11-2) leads the men’s basketball conference race by one game in the loss column with seven wins in a row following Wednesday’s win over ASU, but we’re not convinced the Trojans are the best team.

And we’re deeply skeptical they will be the last team standing in Las Vegas (assuming there’s a Pac-12 tournament). The team to beat, in our view, is Oregon.

RISINn: ORinON WASKiTWALL >> The Ducks finally have a healthy starting backcourt with scorer Chris Duarte, who missed most of January, and point guard Will Richardson, who was out for two months with a thumb injury.

Because of multiple COVID pauses, the Ducks (7-3) have played three fewer games than the L.A. schools (and five fewer than some others). But they have won three in a row entering a stretch run schedule that presents opportunities for additional momentum.

Although the circumstances are unprecedented, the arc of Oregon’s season looks familiar. No program in the conference consistently finishes stronger

Jon Wilner writes about Pac-12 football and basketball almost every day of the year. Sign up for his newsletter and never miss a thing. It’s easy and it’s free.

Go to mercurynews.com/ tag/pac-12-hotline

than the Ducks.

Their record the previous four seasons, from Feb. 1 through the Pac-12 tournament:

2017: 10-2; 2018: 8-4; 2019: 10-4; 2020: 6-3; Total: 34-13

Of note: Oregon’s lone matchup against USC was postponed and may not be rescheduled, adding intrigue to a potential showdown on the final day in TMobile Arena.

FALLING: PAC-12 OUTLOOK >> Viewed through the prism of Selection Sunday, the conference has split into four tiers:

• Tier One: USC, UCLA, Colorado and Oregon.

These four are either locks or likely candidates for the at-large pool.

• Tier Two: Arizona. The Wildcats would be in solid shape for an atlarge berth but are ineligible for the postseason

(both the Pac-12 tournament and the NCAAs).

• Tier Three: Stanford. The Cardinal (13-8/9-6) is very much on the bubble with a NET ranking in the high 50s.

• Tier Four: Arizona State, Utah, Cal, Oregon State, Washington State and Washington.

These six have no chance to make the NCAAs without the automatic berth that comes from winning the conference tournament. One of the intriguing storylines to track down the stretch is the degree to which Tier Two impacts Tier Three.

Stanford has two wins over Arizona, so a solid finish by the Wildcats, who are playing only for pride, would greatly enhance the Cardinal’s prospects. But if Arizona staggers, it could drag down Stanford’s resume and inadvertently play a hand in the conference sending only four teams to the NCAAs.

RISING: WASHINGTON BASKETBALL

>> It’s all relative, and with three conference wins, the Huskies are now trouncing expectations for their season.

Of course, those expectations were established during an eight-game losing streak, when UW appeared headed for a zeroor one-win season.

Instead of being historically bad, the Huskies are simply bad: They’re 3-12 in conference play after outlasting WSU on Monday and have a chance to collect two more wins with

the Bay Area teams visiting this week. Optics matter, and 1-18 would feel like a hole from which there was no escape.

But 4-15 or 5-14? That would leave the faintest glimmer of hope for next season. Again, it’s all relative. There are degrees of bad.

FALLING: ARIZONA STATE >> Picked to finish second in the Pac-12 preseason media poll, the Sun Devils (46) are closer to last place than first in a season that has gone all wrong from the start.

Here’s the latest: They emerged from a second COVID pause with a patchwork rotation, split their home weekend against the Oregon schools and now head to Los Angeles on a short week — just two days to prepare for Wednesday’s game at USC.

Could the Sun Devils have better handled their business on the court? Absolutely. Every team has dealt with injuries and

COVID issues, often in tandem.

But ASU’s problems — both in the range of issues and the number of players affected — have lurched toward the extreme. No team has more reason to push for the Pac-12 tournament to be played as scheduled. It’s the only chance for ASU to salvage a season that has so thoroughly gone off the rails.

Of the six teams languishing on Tier Four, they stand the best chance, by far, of getting hot and claiming the automatic bid.

RISING: USC ATHLETICS >>The Trojans provided an update Tuesday on COVID testing results. For those interested in the data, it was revealing.

During a two-month stretch that include the return from winter break, USC conducted more than 5,000 tests and had an impressively low positivity rate of 0.82 percent. (The rate in L.A. County is 7.2 percent.)

We were struck by two details:

• None of the 47 confirmed positives during that two-month window “have been traced to athletics activities,” per the Trojans.

• Only four of the 47 positives have come within the past two weeks, suggesting that safety protocols (school) and sense of accountability (athletes) are an extremely effective combination.

Put another way: Free time and infection risk move in lockstep.

While the focus here is USC, our guess is that other schools have experienced similar post-holiday trends. The Hotline’s stance throughout the fall and winter has been that team activities, with the carrot of competition, provide the safest environment for the athletes.

In the five months since the Pac-12 voted to restart football, no evidence has surfaced to convince us otherwise.